Military press

Lithuanian armed forces are proud to present to you this new and in some case unique project - the monthly issue "Lithuanian Military Digest", dedicated to those who serve in the eFP Battalion and our other allies residing in Lithuania. After a number of considerations and experiments, a creative idea is finally seeing daylight, and, we hope, will be a pleasant addition to your spare time.

Our vision is to provide the most up-to-date news in the fields of security and defence, original articles, leisure time opportunities for soldiers, and your own service experiences and achievements in Lithuania. We hope to gather you all not just as an audience of readers but also as content creators; every month we will allocate time for visits to Rukla, NFIU headquarters, Zokniai airbase, where we will prepare reportages and interviews.

Also, we want to share the history of our beloved land and a variety of other interesting topics, which will be published in a special rubric. With this very first edition of the digest we invite you to get acquainted with Adolfas Ramanauskas-Vanagas, one of the most famous Lithuanian freedom fighters. For this partisan's memory 2018 was announced as his year.

We believe that, perhaps, this project will become not only a regular informational issue, but will also allow each one of you to bring back a piece of our small but magnificent Lithuania to your homeland.

We all know this summer has been an intense period of trainings for the Enhanced Forward Presence (eFP) Battle Group's and the Lithuanian soldiers. Various exercises took place one after another, thus there are no doubts we make a strong and reliable Alliance. However, we shall not forget that the threats coming from the East are still sending us a clear signal about their readiness to disturb the lives of free people. On July 16, a meeting between American and Russian leaders took place in Helsinki, where key issues were discussed. This happened to become another chance for Vladimir Putin to demonstrate his imaginary power and Russia's willingness to keep running its war machine. It is important to pay attention to the fact that by annexing Crimea and entering the regular Russian troops into the territory of Ukraine, Russia has violated the Budapest memorandum. In addition to his cynical but not surprising statement V. Putin, who intends to develop the idea of the new Cold War, proceeded by using common lies about the new world. "The Cold War is a thing of past. The era of acute ideological confrontation of the two countries is a thing of the remote past - it is a vestige of the past," he claimed. As Michael Kofman, a senior research scientist at the CNA Corporation says, for Russia it is about its survival as a power in the international order, and also about holding onto the remnants of the Russian empire.

2nd issue of "Lithuanian Military Digest" is focused on the topic then while celebrating the 100th anniversary of Lithuania's independence, we, Lithuanians, as well as our country's guests and allied soldiers can walk peacefully on this beloved land that have not been stepped by any enemies' feet for 27 years. We can all breathe the freedom. However, even while rejoicing the recovering, rising and modernizing country, we are still in a fight every day. Every citizen of the Western world is being disturbed by the information warfare, every sober-minded person knows that he lives in the shadow of the threat of an enemy who wants to bring the world back to the times of the past. Since he took power for the first time in 2000, Vladimir Putin - who once called the fall of the Soviet Union "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century" - has aimed to restore Russia's power on the world stage.

Creating a Russian propaganda machine to his people, V. Putin seems to be drawing a dreamed world of fantasies, where everybody who supports this leader's regime can feel invincible and happy, having the magical weapons, such as, for example, the "global unlimited range cruise missile" besides them.

What is the likely option if Putin suddenly would decide to push a so-called nuclear suitcase button, so "the West actually hears him"? If the US begins to increase its defensive potential, can Moscow hope that it will win this competition?